The Democrat-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAS) has announced contempt proceedings against Mike Pompeo, saying the US secretary of state refused to comply with the panel’s two subpoenas related to the Ukraine scandal.
The first subpoena pertains to the committee’s request that the State Department provide documents on the House impeachment probe into President Trump’s withholding of military assistance to Ukraine.
The second one deals with tens of thousands of documents that were sent by the State Department to two Republican-controlled Senate committees and that were related to their inquiry into former Vice President Joe Biden’s diplomacy in Ukraine under the Obama administration. The US secretary of state declined to provide the HFAS with these documents.
HFAS Chairman Eliot Engel said in a statement on Friday that Pompeo’s “ongoing defiance of two duly authorized subpoenas on matters directly linked to American foreign policy toward Ukraine has left the Committee no further option but to begin drafting a resolution finding Secretary Pompeo in contempt of Congress”.
“He seems to think the office he holds, the Department he runs, the personnel he oversees, and the taxpayer dollars that pay for all of it are there for his personal and political benefit”, Engel added.
The State Department, for its part, slammed the HFAS contempt proceedings announcement as “political theatrics” and “an unfortunate waste of taxpayer resources”.
“We have previously offered to provide copies of these documents to Chairman Engel, with the only condition being that he send a letter explaining what foreign policy issue he is investigating that requires these documents. Once this letter is received, the Department will produce the documents”, the department emphasised.
Last Year’s Impeachment Probe Against Trump
In October 2019, House lawmakers required the documents from Pompeo amid the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, which was launched in September, after a whistleblower's complaint about a phone call between the US president and his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky.
The Democrats used the Trump-Zelensky conversation as a pretext to announce impeachment proceedings against POTUS who was accused of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Trump, who rejected the allegations and dubbed the impeachment proceedings “witch hunt garbage", was then acquitted by the Republican-led Senate.
